Editor's Note: Robert M. Danin is Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a former Director for the Levant and Israeli-Palestinian Affairs at the National Security Council.

By Robert M. Danin – Special to CNN

The Arab League’s decision on Sunday to renew its monitors’ mandate consigns Syria to further bloodshed and the pan-Arab body back to its longstanding position of irrelevance. Arab League representatives argue that they’ve ratcheted up the pressure by calling on President Bashar al-Assad to surrender power to a deputy, form a national unity government, and hold multi-party elections. But who can take this call seriously?

Damascus agreed last November to the Arab League’s original plan to pull back its heavy weapons from Syria’s cities, halt attacks on protesters, open talks with the opposition, and allow human rights workers and journalists into Syria. The Syrian regime did little other than let in a fraction of the Arab League monitoring team into the country and restrict their movements. In the one month that those Arab League monitors were in Syria, Assad’s savagery only increased along with the daily rate of Syrians killed.

The Arab League had earlier shown promise with its decisions to request non-Arab engagement in Libya, and then its subsequent decisions to suspending Syria from its body and impose economic sanctions on Damascus. But those sanctions are still largely unimplemented, and the Arab League seems to have lost its resolve. Had it demonstrated courage, the Arab League would have admitted that the monitoring effort was a failure, or put serious muscle behind its actions.

Clearly, that’s what Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal wanted. In response to Sunday’s Arab League decision, Prince Saud announced, “My country will withdraw its monitors because the Syrian government did not execute any of the elements of the Arab League plan.” Instead, Faisal called for the international community to take greater responsibility for countering Assad’s carnage.

Sunday's Arab League decisions are a profound disappointment to those of us who had hoped that the Arab League was adapting itself to the unrest sweeping the Arab world by making itself responsive to the needs of the Arab people. Instead, the Cairo-based body has reverted back to its traditional form, disconnected from the sentiments of the people it purports to represent. In doing so, the League squandered an opportunity to state honestly that its monitoring mission has only provided additional time and cover for Assad to increase the daily killing of scores upon scores of Syrians. The credibility of this monitoring effort was illustrated by the fact that over twenty of the more than 100 monitors allowed into Syria have resigned out of conscience.

The silver lining in all this is the Arab League’s dismal efforts have drawn attention to a conflict that the international community otherwise seems to want to just go away. The Obama Administration’s high-level inattention towards the bloodshed in Syria is curious, given just how inimical such a posture is to American interests and values.

Syria’s recent unrest has already diminished Damascus’ ability to support terrorists and other retrograde elements - witness Hamas’ move to find safer haven and Iran’s move to step up its direct support for Gaza’s Islamic Jihad given the loss of Syria as a middle-man. With Syria strategically located at the region’s epicenter bordering countries vital to U.S. interests - including Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon - there is no reason to believe that increased turmoil and instability in Syria will remain contained there.

Bashar al-Assad has a demonstrated record of recklessness and of efforts to export violence, unrest, and subterfuge towards all of these neighbors. For Syria’s neighbors, Bashar is simply an accident waiting to happen. Moreover, with Syria the sole Arab country that has openly and actively facilitated the expansion of Iranian influence into the Arab world, success in rolling that back would be a victory of strategic significance.

No doubt, there are grave risks inherent in the collapse of the Assad regime. Those who back Assad today do so not out of affection or respect for the man or his regime, but out of fear of chaos or an Islamist take-over in Syria. These concerns have some legitimacy. But the status quo in Syria is equally if not more dangerous. The country is clearly sliding into civil war and intense sectarian strife. The stability once offered by the Assad family business has long since ended.

President Obama no doubt understands all this. Otherwise, he would not have long ago crossed the Rubicon by calling - repeatedly - for the Alawite ophthalmologist, Bashar al-Assad, to go. Yet the Administration seems to think this will happen by itself. For months, officials have been saying that Assad’s days were numbered. In early November, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Assad’s departure was “inevitable.” Yet when Administration officials are asked about timing, their assessments vary widely, ranging from days and weeks to months and years. Indeed, in the long run, all leaders’ days are numbered.

The Istanbul-based Syrian National Council, an umbrella group of oppositionists, asked the Arab League recently to request the United Nations Security Council authorize a no-fly zone over Syria. Even if such a no fly-zone were militarily desirable as a panacea to the ills that plague the Syrian forces fighting to topple the Assad regime - a questionable proposition from a military perspective - the political and diplomatic pieces needed to legitimate and effectuate such an action are a long way off.

The Arab League won’t request it, the Russians are implacably hostile to it, and NATO’s senior military leadership misses no opportunity to articulate its adamant opposition. Syria is not Libya, and even Libya is not looking so great these days. Syria is currently mired in a tragic situation that does not lend itself to a single magic step to end the bloodshed.

That does not mean the situation is impossible or irrevocably in stalemate. The difficulties posed by the Assad regime and its international supporters should not allow the Obama Administration to conclude that nothing can be done. There are a number of things that can be done, short of military intervention, to increase the pressure on Bashar al-Assad, isolate his regime internationally, weaken his base of support in Syria, and help begin to prepare the environment for a post-Assad Syria. What follows are eight steps that the United States and other members of the international community could adopt, well short of military action, to this end:

1. Recall the U.S. Ambassador from Syria.

Washington’s envoy to Damascus, Robert Ford, has been valiant and courageous in his public outreach and his efforts support legitimate protests in Syria. But given the growing illegitimacy of the Assad regime, Ford’s continued presence there makes little sense. It undermines the President’s message that Assad must go. He should be withdrawn. This withdrawal is all the more timely as Washington begs the Syrians to provide adequate security to the U.S. Embassy. The most visible American in Damascus is not necessarily best positioned anymore to have discreet discussions with the Syrian opposition. Other Americans on the ground should do that.

2. Put the Syrian regime on notice that it alone will be held responsible for any harm to American officials in Syria and threaten to close the U.S. Embassy if American officials’ safety and freedom of movement is not guaranteed.

In the past few days, Washington has asked the Syrian government to bolster security around the American compound in Damascus. According to the State Department, the Syrian government is “considering the request.”

This approach is unacceptable. With bombs regularly exploding in Damascus, and the government struggling to create a narrative that the Syrian government is the victim of foreign intrigue, the U.S. has inadvertently put the initiative (and American lives) in the hands of proven killers. It is desirable to keep our embassy open to reach out to opposition elements and civil society. But closing the embassy is far preferable than waiting for the next Syrian rent-a-crowd or bomb to attack American facilities. This has happened several times before in Syria. How long before the Syrians attack again?

3. Create an international Syria contact group or “Friends of Syria” to unite efforts to help the Syrians people, heighten diplomatic pressure on Syria, and prepare for the “day after.”

Such a contact group was remarkably effective in uniting international diplomatic efforts and drawing international attention towards Libya. It could serve to coordinate efforts by those Arab states, like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Jordan, that have clearly broken with Bashar al-Assad and those in the West, such as France, Britain, and hopefully the U.S. that claim to have done the same.

4. Provide greater support and deploy a senior American official to the Syrian opposition.

The Syrian opposition is clearly fractured along sectarian, ideological, and programmatic lines, not to mention between those located inside the country and those based in neighboring Turkey. Divisions and disorganization is not surprising, given Syria’s heterogeneity and the opposition relatively recent formation. Yet it is unrealistic, if not disingenuous, for foreign governments to withhold support to the opposition until they overcome their differences. Left to their own devices, they will remain divided and unable to reach out to the significant minority groups that remain fearful that a post-Assad Syria will offer them no protections.

Greater organizational and diplomatic support should be provided immediately. While full diplomatic recognition as the sole representative of Syria should be conferred only under the right conditions, in the meantime, the U.S. should take other steps, including sending a full time and visible representative to the Syrian National Council, just as we did when the able diplomat Chris Stevens was assigned to work with the Libyan opposition in Benghazi.

5. Push for an Arms Embargo on Syria.

Russia has brazenly defied calls to halt its arms shipments to the Syrian government and threatened to veto any resolution at the United Nations that calls for an arms embargo. This should not deter efforts to unite the rest of the world around a resolution endorsing an arms embargo, even if in the end Russia is forced to stand alone at the Security Council by casting an embarrassing and indefensible veto.

6. Keep Syria on the Security Council Agenda.

Since at least last October, Russia has agilely stymied efforts to condemn Syria at the United Nations by providing watered down resolutions that create moral equivalencies between the Assad regime and the protesters demonstrating again it. As a corollary to its efforts to impose an arms embargo on Syria, the international community should introduce the harshest possible condemnation of the Syrian government’s reprehensible actions, and then force the Russians to have to stand alone in defending Bashar al-Assad. No doubt gaining unanimity even without Russia and without Arab League endorsement will require scaling back the punitive effect of such a resolution. But even a purely symbolic resolution condemning Syria is important in keeping the international community’s human rights’ compass properly aligned.

7. Tighten sanctions on Syrian government officials and their supporters.

Broad sanctions against Syria are clearly having a devastating impact on the country’s economy. But it is not clear that it is forcing the key pillars of the regime’s support - the army and the Aleppo and Damascene business communities. Designating key individuals who are most critical to supporting Assad’s continued rule would be more effective and less blunt an instrument. These measures would include freezing assets of more senior officials, tightening travel bans on them and their families, encouraging Europe to expand the list of individuals, companies and institutions targeted by European Union sanctions. To date, EU sanctions target 30 entities and 86 Syrian individuals.

8. Initiate steps to indict Bashar al-Assad and his key henchmen at the International Criminal Court.

Syria is not a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the Court in 2002. Nonetheless, Assad’s regime could be held accountable if the Security Council were to ask the ICC's chief prosecutor to investigate the situation. Such a precedent was set in February 2011 when United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970 referred Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's regime to the ICC. Some government officials argue that even Russia and China may be amenable to some action along these lines.

No doubt, there are more steps that governments and institutions can adopt to further pressure and isolate the Assad regime. Government mandarins can and always will provide compelling arguments against taking any given course of action, suggesting that such steps are either bad ideas or have already been tried. That is why senior officials must lead and take difficult decisions.

The current international paralysis and relative silence about Syria, just like the Arab League’s efforts to effectuate change in Syria, will be seen in Damascus as either a sign of weakness or a tacit if uncomfortable preference for the status quo. Changing that perception is necessary to forcing real behavior change, if not regime change, in Syria. Yet that perception can only be changed through serious, concerted, and ongoing high-level international attention. It was once called diplomacy.

soundoff(54 Responses)

j. von hettlingen

The Arab League is divided and split about the Syrian Crisis. On the one hand it announced to extend the controversial mission which is seen as weak and ineffectual, to the delight of Assad and his loyalists. On the other hand there are loud voices from Saudi Arabia and Qatar that urged for international involvement to mount the pressure on Assad to step down. Of course he has no intention to do so and condemns the "flagrant interference" in Syria's domestic affairs. An implosion might be the best way to get rid of the regime. The protesters need to be united and patient.

This is all fine and dandy, but the author never touched on the subject of Russia's keen support for the Al-Assad regime. The question is, will Russia provide enough of a lifeline to the Assad regime to keep it alive indefinitely, despite all the actions mentioned above? One would wonder.

Don't we have the brightest journalists? If they are so well informed, no wonder we're so well informed as a country. (Do you really think it was poor wording or just another idiot journalist?)

January 23, 2012 at 2:16 pm |

syrian

Arab league plan for Syria is the last chance to end the violence in Syria and to stop potential civil war. The plan calls for Assad for give power and formation of transition government. Most Arab and Islamic counties backed the plan and now it is up to the international community to adopt the plan through the world security council.
Our hope in that the United States and the European Union will convince Russia and China to buy the plan.

Assad refusal of the plan shows the true face of a murder regime that will do any thing to keep power.

Syrian people already paid heavy price... And we are not asking for military intervention all we are asking for is isolated and reject Assad regime and hold him accountable for his crimes.

To my fellow Syrians I want to say that we will gain our freedom with our sacrifices…Assad regime no longer belong to civilized Syria….
God…Syria…. Freedom

Russia will never "buy the plan" persay. But they shall be left in the dark, right behind a war criminal like al-Assad, financing a human massacre after another. Our best hope is Russia will stand neutral at best.

Americans have been killing each other forever. A civil war, highest murder rate in the modern world, capital punishment practiced by a very few like-minded countries such as Syria, Iran, China.......

January 23, 2012 at 10:15 pm |

adele

Taskmaster,
when making such general, broad statements you should back them up with credible historical references. I for one would be interested to know how you came to this conclusion. Otherwise, your statement is racist and shows your personal hostility toward people in the Middle East

Furthermore, here is a list of wars fought in Europe during the past thousand years. Gosh, these Europeans (aka, Christian White people...not Muslims) have been fighting and killing each other for the past thousand years! Hope I made my point.

1066-1088 Norman conquest of England
1169 Norman invasion of Ireland
1185-1204 Uprising of Asen and Peter
1208-1227 Conquest of Estonia
1209-1229 Albigensian Crusade
1220-1264 The Age of the Sturlungs
1223-1241 Mongol invasion of Europe
1256-1381 Venetian–Genoese Wars
1277-1280 Uprising of Ivaylo
1282-1302 War of the Sicilian Vespers
1296-1357 Wars of Scottish Independence
1321-1328 Byzantine civil war of 1321–1328
1323-1328 Peasant revolt in Flanders
1326-1332 Polish–Teutonic War
1337-1453 Hundred Years' War
1340-1392 Galicia–Volhynia Wars
1340-1396 Bulgarian–Ottoman Wars
1341-1347 Byzantine civil war of 1341–1347
1342-1350 Zealot's Rebellion
1343-1345 St. George's Night Uprising
1356-1358 Jacquerie
1356 – 1375 War of the Two Peters
1366-1369 Castilian Civil War
1366-1526 Ottoman–Hungarian Wars
1371-1381 War of Chioggia
1373-1379 Byzantine civil war of 1373–1379
1381 Peasants' Revolt
1382 Harelle and Maillotins Revolt
1389 Battle of Kosovo
1395 Battle of Nicopolis
1409-1411 Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War
1414 Hunger War
1419-1434 Hussite Wars
1422 Gollub War
1425-1454 Wars in Lombardy
1431-1435 Polish–Teutonic War
1437 Budai Nagy Antal Revolt
1438-1556 Russo-Kazan Wars
1440-1446 Old Zürich War
1443-1444 Long campaign
1447-1448 Albanian–Venetian War
1449-1450 First Margrave War
1451-1455 Navarrese Civil War
1454-1466 Thirteen Years' War
1455-1487 Wars of the Roses
1462-1485 Rebellion of the Remences
1462-1472 Catalonian Civil War
1466-1469 Irmandiño Wars
1467-1479 War of the Priests
1468 Waldshut War
1470-1471 Dano-Swedish War
1475-1479 War of the Castilian Succession
1478 Carinthian peasant revolt
1482-1484 War of Ferrara
1495-1497 Russo-Swedish War
1497 Cornish Rebellion of 1497
1499 Swabian War
1494-1498 Italian War of 1494–1498
1499-1504 Italian War of 1499–1504
1508-1516 War of the League of Cambrai
1514 Poor Conrad's Rebellion
1514 Dózsa rebellion
1515 Slovenian peasant revolt
1519-1521 Polish–Teutonic War
1520-1521 Revolt of the Comuneros
1521-1523 Revolt of the Brotherhoods
1521-1523 Swedish War of Liberation
1521 – 1718 Ottoman-Habsburg wars
1522-1523 Knights' Revolt
1522–1559 Habsburg-Valois Wars
1524-1525 Peasants' War
1529 First War of Kappel
1531 Second War of Kappel
1534-1536 Count's Feud
1536-1537 Pilgrimage of Grace
1540 Salt War
1542-1543 Dacke War
1543-1550 The Rough Wooing
1546-1547 Schmalkaldic War
1549 Kett's Rebellion
1549 Prayer Book Rebellion
1552-1555 Second Margrave War
1554 Wyatt's rebellion
1554-1557 Russo-Swedish War
1558-1583 Livonian War
1562-1598 French Wars of Religion
1563-1570 Northern Seven Years' War
1568-1570 Morisco Revolt
1568–1648 Eighty Years' War
1573 Croatian–Slovenian peasant revolt
1580-1583 War of the Portuguese Succession
1585-1604 Anglo-Spanish War (1585)
1587-1588 War of the Polish Succession
1590-1595 Russo-Swedish War
1593-1606 Long War
1593-1617 Moldavian Magnate Wars
1594-1603 Nine Years War (Ireland)
1596-1597 Cudgel War
1605-1618 Polish–Muscovite War
1606-1607 Bolotnikov Rebellion
1610-1617 Ingrian War
1611-1613 Kalmar War
1615-1618 Uskok War
1618–1648 Thirty Years' War
1620-1621 Polish–Ottoman War
1628 – 1631 War of the Mantuan Succession
1632-1634 Smolensk War
1638 Ostrzanin Uprising
1639-1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms
1640-1688 Portuguese Restoration War
1642–1651 English Civil War
1651 Kostka-Napierski Uprising
1652-1674 Anglo-Dutch Wars
1653 Swiss peasant war of 1653
1654-1667 Russo-Polish War
1655-1660 Second Northern War
1656 War of Villmergen
1663-1664 Austro-Turkish War
1667–1668 War of Devolution
1670-1671 Razin's Rebellion
1672-1678 Franco-Dutch War
1679 Covenanter Rebellion
1683–1699 Great Turkish War
1685 Monmouth Rebellion
1688-1697 War of the League of Augsburg
1700–1721 Great Northern War
1701–1713 War of the Spanish Succession
1703-1711 Rákóczi's War for Independence
1707-1708 Bulavin Rebellion
1712 Toggenburg war
1714-1718 Ottoman–Venetian War
1715-1716 Jacobite Rising of 1715
1716-1718 Austro-Turkish War
1718-1720 War of the Quadruple Alliance
1727-1729 Anglo-Spanish War
1733-1738 War of the Polish Succession
1735-1739 Russo-Turkish War
1737-1739 Austro-Turkish War
1740–1748 War of the Austrian Succession
1740 – 1763 Silesian Wars
1741-1743 Russo-Swedish War
1745-1746 Jacobite Rising of 1745
1756–1763 Seven Years' War
1763-1864 Russian–Circassian War
1768-1772 War of the Bar Confederation
1768-1774 Russo-Turkish War
1770 Orlov Revolt
1774-1775 Pugachev's Rebellion
1775-1782 American Revolutionary War (European theatre)
1778-1779 War of the Bavarian Succession
1784 Kettle War
1784 – 1785 Revolt of Horea, Cloșca and Crișan
1787-1791 Austro-Turkish War
1787-1792 Russo-Turkish War
1790 Saxon Peasants' Revolt
1792 Polish–Russian War of 1792
1792–1802 French Revolutionary Wars
1794 Kościuszko Uprising
1798 Irish Rebellion of 1798
1803–1815 Napoleonic Wars
1804-1813 First Serbian Uprising
1809 Polish-Austrian War
1815-1817 Second Serbian Uprising
1817-1864 Russian conquest of the Caucasus
1821-1832 Greek War of Independence
1821 Wallachian uprising of 1821
1823 French invasion of Spain
1826-1828 Russo-Persian War
1828-1829 Russo-Turkish War
1828-1834 Liberal Wars
1830 Ten Days Campaign (following the Belgian Revolt)
1830-1831 November Uprising
1831-1832 Great Bosnian uprising
1833-1839 First Carlist War
1833-1839 Albanian Revolts of 1833–1839
1843-1844 Albanian Revolt of 1843–1844
1846 Galician slaughter
1846-1849 Second Carlist War
1847 Albanian Revolt of 1847
1847 Sonderbund War
1848-1849 Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence
1848-1851 First Schleswig War
1848–1866 Wars of Italian Independence
1848–1849 First Italian Independence War
1859 Second Italian War of Independence
1866 Third Italian War of Independence
1854 Epirus Revolt of 1854
1854–1856 Crimean War
1858 Mahtra War
1863-1864 January Uprising
1864 Second Schleswig War
1864 January Uprising
1866 Austro-Prussian War
1866-1869 Cretan Revolt
1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War
1872-1876 Third Carlist War
1873-1874 Cantonal Revolution
1877–1878 Russo–Turkish War
1878 Epirus Revolt of 1878
1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War
1893–1896 Cod War of 1893
1897 Greco–Turkish War
1910 Albanian Revolt of 1910
1911-1912 Italo-Turkish War
1912–1913 Balkan Wars
1912-1913 First Balkan War
1913 Second Balkan War
1914 Peasant Revolt in Albania
1914–1918 World War I
1916 Easter Rising
1917–1921 Russian Civil War
1918 Finnish Civil War
1918 Polish-Czech war for Teschen Silesia
1918–1919 Polish-Ukrainian War
1918–1919 Greater Poland Uprising
1918–1920 Estonian Liberation War
1918-1920 Latvian War of Independence
1919 Hungarian–Romanian War of 1919
1919-1922 Greco-Turkish War
1919-1923 Turkish War of Independence
1919–1920 Czechoslovakia-Hungary War
1919–1921 Silesian Uprisings
1919–1921 Polish-Soviet War
1919–1921 Anglo-Irish War
1920 Polish-Lithuanian War
1920 Vlora War
1921 Uprising in West Hungary
1922–1923 Irish Civil War
1934 Asturian miners' strike of 1934
1934 Austrian Civil War
1936–1939 Spanish Civil War
1939 Slovak-Hungarian War
1939 Occupation of Zakarpattia Oblast by Hungary
1939–1945 World War II
1939 Soviet invasion of Poland
1939-1940 Winter War
1940-1941Greco-Italian War
1941-1945 Soviet-German war
1941-1944 Continuation War
1944 Slovak National Uprising
1945-1949 Greek Civil War
1953 Uprising in East Germany
1956 Uprising in Poznań
1956 Hungarian Revolution
1959-2011 Basque Conflict
1961 Portuguese Colonial War
1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia
1968-1998 The Troubles
1970-1984 Unrest in Italy
1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus
1984-1999 Turkey–Kurdistan Workers' Party conflict
1988-1994 Nagorno-Karabakh War
1989 Romanian Revolution
1991 Ten-Day War
1991-1992 South Ossetian War of Independence
1991-1993 Georgian Civil War
1991-1995 Croatian War of Independence
1992 War of Transnistria
1992 Ossetian-Ingush conflict
1992-1993 First War in Abkhazia
1992-1995 Bosnian War
1994-1996 First Chechen War
1997 Unrest in Albania
1998-1999 Kosovo War
1998-present Republican Dissidents Conflict
1998 Second War in Abkhazia
1999 Dagestan War
1999-2009 Second Chechen War
1999-2001 Insurgency in the Preševo Valley
2001 Insurgency in the Republic of Macedonia
2002 Perejil Island crisis
2004-present Turkey–Kurdistan Workers' Party conflict
2004 Unrest in Kosovo
2004 Adjara crisis
2007 Civil war in Ingushetia
2008 War in South Ossetia
2009-present Insurgency in the North Caucasus
2011-present Kosovo – Serbia border clashes

with out attacking bashar al asad and take him to court as they killed 8000 people , nothing will happen he take money and weapons from russia and iran pays the bill, iraq pay him cash too plus free oil those shiia thugs are killers and terrorists all helping hizboallah , when usa and un will wake up!!/ attack now and get red of syrian thugs so we can be ready for the evil iranians.

You don't have to criticize Islam, because Islam is not the issue here, it's all about power. Yes the Libyans went too far in torturing ghadafi but the doesn't mean Islam is a bad religion, it means the people have sinned in Islam do don't say Islam is evil because it is not!

It's interesting how when US media reports on foreign governments using armed police to attack protesters; it's an appalling thing, but when the US does the exact same thing(IE. OCCUPY movement), it's OK.. In fact, American riot police conducted unannounced 1:00 AM raids on OCCUPY protesters (in multiple US cities), to catch these peaceful protesters off guard, while at the same time doing their best to incite violence, to further justify an unwarranted harsh response against PEACEFUL AMERICAN PROTESTERS! WAKE UP AMERICA! SUPPORT OCCUPY!!

Editor's Note: Robert M. Danin is Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a former Director for the Levant and Israeli-Palestinian Affairs at the National Security Council.

Mr Editor, you are a bad editor accepting crap scholarship because this so-called expert believes Turkey is Arab.

The most sensible post on this disgustingly perverse blog. Robert Danin is a zionist propagandist who should not be allowed to have such a platform on CNN. Shame on you Sir or as they say in Arabic "Bookhshi"

Are these the same people who are meant to represent the educated, moderate, humane and democratic part of the world preaching to the other side?

IF MUSLIMS TAKE ALL OVER THE WORLD IT WILL BE THE END OF OUR CIVILIZATION, AS THEY ARE UN FIT TO ROLE OR GOVERN LOOK WHAT HAPPEN TO IRAQ ON THE HANDS OF SHIIE3A MUSLIMS THUGS, IRAN ARE DESTROYING ISLAM IN HAMAS PALESTINE, IN BAHRAIN, IN IRAQ IN LEBANON , IN SYRIA AND LIBYA AND MANY OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD , SENDING WEAPONS AND MONEY TO DESTROY THE PEACE OF THE NATION....THOSE EVIL SHIIE3A THUGS MY BE STOPPED, WE MUST ATTACK IRAN NOW.

A plea deal for a U.S. Marine squad leader charged in connection with the deaths of 24 people, in which he received a rank reduction and pay cut but avoided jail time. IRAQI PRIM MINSTER NORI AL HALEKI IS SILENT AS HE DONT CARE ABOUT THOSE WHO ARE MURDERED BY USA 24 CHILD WOMEN AND OLD MEN BECAUSE ALL OF THEM ARE SUNNI, USA IRAN AND IRAQI THUGS ARE KILLERS AND HAVE NO MORAL OR HUMAN RIGHT VALUE.

THESE ARE FACTS, BASHAR AL KALAB OF SYRIA KILLED 8692 TO DATE, PUT 132000 IN PRISON, HIS ARMY RA..PED 2000 SUNNI WOMEN AND 2300 KURDS, AND MORE THAN 500 CHRISTEANS.
THEY ARE ONLY 12% OF POPLUATION CONTROLING 88% OF SUNNI .KURDS AND OTHERS.
IRAN PAY RUSSIA CASH AND RUSSIA SEND WEAPONS SECOND HANDS ARMS TO SYRIA, IRAQ SEND CASH AND TERRORISTS TO HEL ASAD TO KILL OTHER PEOPLE AND ALL THOSE HELPING HIZBOALLAH, RUSSIA HATE MUSLIMS AND THEY ARE NOT ALLOWING DEMOCRACY IN THE CHECHNIA AND OTHER MUSLIM STATES INSIDE RUSSIA THEY FEAR THAT RUSSIA IS NEXT. RUSSIAN PEOPLE WILL REVOLT AGAIN AGANIST THOSE COMMUNISTS , MIDDLEAST SHOULD GET RED OF ALL RUSSIAN EMBASIES AND DONT DEAL WITH THEM.

Help Syria by maybe calling off the CIA Al-Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood death-squads that are randomly sniping civilians (women and children) and then erroneously blaming it on "forces loyal to Assad." How much innocent blood are you you gutless treason lovin vermin willing to spill, knowing that it all comes back to you some day?

bashar al kalb of Syria must be hanged he is war criminal killed more than 8500 people those thugs Iranians supporters and Hezbollah helper are terrorists. IRAN=SYRIA=HEZBOLLAH=EVIL
THE PROBLEM IS THAT RUSSIA COMMUNIST THUGS ARE HELPING SYRIA AND IRAN, AS EVIL IS HELPING EVIL.
IF RUSSIA PROTECT BASHAR AL KALB THEN RUSSIA IS OUR ENEMY AND WE MUST ATTACK RUSSIA NOW ANY WHERE ANY PLACE, ALL THE RUSSIAN SHIPS SHOULD BE TARGET TO SYRIAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS. USA SHOULD HELP THE PEOPLE SO THEY CAN CARRY OUT THE ATTACK ON RUSSIAN SOIL AND SHIPS BRING THE WAR TO RUSSIA, MIDDLEAST COUNTRIES SHOULD CUT ALL DIPLOMATIC AND ECONOMIC DEALING WITH RUSSIA NOW HIT THEM ON THE POCKET BOOK AND RUSSIA WILL COLLAPSE AGAIN.

The Arab League is predominantly a Sunni organization.On the one hand, it is trying to destabilize the Shia spported regime of Bashar Assad in Syria.And on the other, it is protecting the dictatorships in its own fold from being swept away by the Arab Spring by pretending to be in favor of democratization in Tunisia,Egypt,Libya,and Syria as a diversionary tactic.The world should recognize this deception.

Russians are killers they are killing chichnians every day and many Muslims states in Russia not allowed to get the freedom l that enjoyed by christens like Georgia and Ukraine , Russia helping Syria so iran can pay cash and free oil. Russia has blood on their hands and they must pay the price we must all target Russia every where in the world

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